Burke's Garden Rural Historic District

Burke's Garden is a bowl-shaped valley in southeastern Tazewell County, Virginia, about nine miles long and four and a half miles wide, fully encircled by Garden Mountain. Settlers arrived in the mid-18th century, and the basin still shows its early pattern of pasture, cropland, clustered farm buildings and winding roads, with one main route, the Central Road, running through a gap in the north. The district counts 249 contributing resources, including farmhouses, barns, springhouses, a late 19th-century store, an 1876 church with a cemetery of rare German sandstone gravestones, and a 1930s brick gymnasium. Houses range from an early stone Federal dwelling of about 1812 to Greek Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne and Foursquare examples. Thirty-five archaeological sites include the Hoge site, the highest known prehistoric village site in Virginia. Modern houses and farm structures intrude in places, but the rolling terrain screens many of them.